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sfcrazy writes "A top Monsanto executive has won the prestigious World Food Prize. Secretary of State John Kerry announced the award where Robert T. Fraley, the executive vice president and CTO of Monsanto, won the prize along with two other scientists from Belgium and the US. The award was given for devising a method to insert genes from another organism into plant cells, which could produce new genetic lines with highly favorable traits."

Last week, Monsanto's leak of genetically modified wheat polluted countless acres of US wheat leading to countries around the world banning the import of all US wheat. Today, Monsanto wins the World Food Prize!

It also ups the ante in the arms race of evolution, which isn't universally seen as a good thing.

It certainty is a bad thing, which is why millions of people protested conventional breeding when late blight overcame the conventionally bred resistances in tomato and when hessian flies overcame conventionally bred resistance in wheat. Oh wait, that never happened because it would be absolutely idiotic, yet somehow, when genetic engineering is involved, the same basic facts of population genetics are suddenly terrible and proof that the technique itself is bad. Perhaps it is because the vast vast majority of the opposition to genetic engineering is coming from those with no background in agricultural or plant science and thus due to their complete lack of context it seems reasonable to them.

Calling objection "hysteria" doesn't make it so. Some protesters are quite enlightened and think long term.

And most of the protesters are the agricultural equivalents to the anti-vaccine movement. And when you are doing little in the way of scientifically justifying your concerns, instead preferring to use bunk science [wikipedia.org], fearmongering [organicconsumers.org], and outright vandalism [biofortified.org] on non-corporate [redgreenandblue.org] projects [freshplaza.com] and farmer's fields [staradvertiser.com], you shouldn't be surprised when you get characterized poorly. Hell, there is no small opposition to even things like Golden Rice (biofortified with -carotene) and the Arctic apple (which does not oxidize when cut). I'm sure there is a perfectly good reason as to why that is, if not unscientific hysteria, because this stuff [facebook.com] isn't looking good.

Just about everything carries risk (again for context, even conventional breeding conventional breeding [nap.edu] carries risk), just about everything has some negatives that come with the positives, there are actual issues, and not every genetically engineered organisms will necessarily turn out to be a good thing. But to paint the anti-GMO movement as a whole as anything even remotely reasonable would be like saying young earth creationists simply have a dispute with the minor details of a few phylogenies.

Perhaps it is because the vast vast majority of the opposition to genetic engineering is coming from those with no background in agricultural or plant science and thus due to their complete lack of context it seems reasonable to them.

The real problem is "close source food chain" vs. "open source food chain". That is why GM food - Monsanto style - is bad. Really bad. Unfortunately the anti-GM movement has taken a different path of protesting against the science, rather than this very basic fact.

A closed source food chain is a major problem for everyone, except those who hold the patents.

A closed source food chain is a major problem for everyone, except those who hold the patents.

Opposition to the patent aspect is certainty a lot more reasonable than trying to dismiss science, but it isn't such a simple issue when you consider the benefits to other groups, like farmers and consumers, from the creation of new varieties that are funded by patent royalties. Take the Honeycrisp apple for example. Do you like it? Most people do. It was, until the recent expiration, a patented variety (it is not GMO by the way; non-GE plants can also be patented). Despite this, growers liked it becau

The real problem is "close source food chain" vs. "open source food chain". That is why GM food - Monsanto style - is bad. Really bad. Unfortunately the anti-GM movement has taken a different path of protesting against the science, rather than this very basic fact.

Patents last about 20 years. Monsanto's patents on the first generation of GM food are expiring next year. That means that everybody will be able to use those seeds freely, and if they are any good, benefit from them (each farmer can decide that f

Maybe patents expire after 20 years, but doesn't Monsanto press contracts on farmers that essentially forbid them to grow their own seeds? And such contracts seem to be even enforcable, legaly or by threat of costly legal cases.

... yet somehow, when genetic engineering is involved, the same basic facts of population genetics are suddenly terrible and proof that the technique itself is bad

A noticeable difference is that by cross-breeding the changes are slow (minor per generation), whereas by GM they can be huge (glowing mice). When some scientist has a bad morning, and releases his latest frankenstein into the wild, we could be majorly **-ed.
So natural selection acts as a fail-safe against one mistake.

That the consequences are irreversible. You can't put the genie back in the bottle again.

You know people said the same thing about Norman Borlaug [wikipedia.org] when he started messing with double rotations, plant genetics, and started the green revolution. Go back and read the magazine articles, news paper stories and watch the TV spots on it. And note how well that worked out, anyone else want to disagree he's one of the greatest humans of the 20th century? Didn't think so.

Seriously, wheat and corn are so genetically fucked up by humans that you should stop eating them if you are afraid of a couple of new genes in GM products. And these genetic changes are not harmless. For example, wheat lost a lot of its protein content and fat compared to the wild precursor. It also gained a couple of allergens (probably from cross-pollination by another close species).

It also ups the ante in the arms race of evolution, which isn't universally seen as a good thing.

Newsflash: Farmers and breeders have been "upping the ante of evolution" for thousands of years. Human interference in evolution has given us a LOT of beneficial improvements to plants and animals alike over the centuries (not to mention making my cute poodle possible).

I'm more concerned about companies ending up with monopolies on the world's wheat/corn/etc. supplies. The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi is set in a near-future world where "competition" between companies like Monsanto (in the form of genetically engineered diseases targeting your competitor's crops) has completely pooched the environment.

Out of the 200 million acres of wheat planted in North America, it was so conveniently only found exactly where the anti-GMO activists looked for it, but subsequently no where else. If I was a conspiracy theorist, I would say that the anti-GMO activists found it so easily, because they planted it.

Hey, if Obama can win the Nobel Peace Prize for expanding our wars and the war powers assumed by his office, why shouldn't a company that that profiteers on regulatory agriculture monopolies get the World Food Prize? I understand The Pope is being considered for an equally prestigious anthropology prize.

There appears coincidentally to be a connection between the Nobel and this so-called World Food Prize. The Nobel awards were started by the man who invented dynamite. The Food Prize, according to the NY Times, "was started in 1987 by Norman E. Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for bringing about the Green Revolution, which vastly increased grain output, and who thought there should be a Nobel Prize for agriculture". One may well argue that dynamite contributed to world peace in the same way the Green Revolution, with its focus on massive crop monocultures, contributed to global food production.

A Monsanto executive winning this award shouldn't be surprising, even without the allegations of financial "compensation". The Green Revolution was all about increasing the supply of food, never mind the quality, or the ecological or social side effects. At who knows what cost, there's no question Monsanto technology helps increase food output.

There appears coincidentally to be a connection between the Nobel and this so-called World Food Prize. The Nobel awards were started by the man who invented dynamite. The Food Prize, according to the NY Times, "was started in 1987 by Norman E. Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for bringing about the Green Revolution, which vastly increased grain output, and who thought there should be a Nobel Prize for agriculture". One may well argue that dynamite contributed to world peace in the same way the Green Revolution, with its focus on massive crop monocultures, contributed to global food production.

A Monsanto executive winning this award shouldn't be surprising, even without the allegations of financial "compensation". The Green Revolution was all about increasing the supply of food, never mind the quality, or the ecological or social side effects. At who knows what cost, there's no question Monsanto technology helps increase food output.

Did you save more than a billion people from starvation? Did you prevent untold suffering and and social problems by ensuring sufficient food for a growing population? No. No you didn't. You know who did? Norman Borlaug.

At "best" the "Green Revolution" postponed the inevitable and meanwhile increased the number of people who would eventually inevitably die from starvation as the land becomes unable to support farming due to depletion and destruction of soil diversity inherent to these methods.

If you can't find a citation with google, then you're an asshole. Right now the deaths are being blamed on Monsanto but the fact is that this has been going on in significant numbers for almost a decade.

The Green Revolution saved billions from famine and disease. As scientific understanding of the process and technology improve leading to improved sustainability. Current systems are very wasteful; some 30-40% of all food ends up not being consumed. RIGHT NOW we produce enough for estimated stable long term population levels of the planet.

If food could be stockpiled for years, then some countries would no longer be hard hit during droughts and other causes of crop failure.

If people have a lot of food then they eat a lot, and they make a lot of babies. And the poorer they are, the more babies they make. Look at how many people have been added to the planet in the last decade and where they were added. People cry "hypermalthusian" when you suggest that this might be leading us to a problem. If India's cropland is failing, what of China? I'll guarantee you that the same is happening to them, only we're not hearing about it as much. Transportation of food is only becoming more e

... and by that logic, the real problem is not the Green Revolution, but agriculture itself.

All you need do is look to Africa to see that improper use of agriculture is hazardous to biostasis. Or, you could take a swift peek at the Amazon, probably already past the point of collapse. You could examine the American West, which has only a tiny fraction of the carbon-fixing biomass that it had two hundred years ago, and which is rapidly becoming desertified.

What is missing in our modern societies is cyclical resource utilization. We keep trying to throw things "away", but there is no "away". The onl

Hey, if Obama can win the Nobel Peace Prize for expanding our wars and the war powers assumed by his office, why shouldn't a company that that profiteers on regulatory agriculture monopolies get the World Food Prize?

To be fair, Obama didn't win the Nobel prize for ending wars. He won the prize for not being Bush.

Seriously, after those disastrous eight years, all Obama had to do was say the word "peace" in a couple speeches. That's a damn low standard for the Peace Prize. In my opinion it is an embarrassment to the Nobel Committee for picking such a bad nominee, and I think Obama should have refused it. He could have given a speech listing a bunch of deserving candidates, pointed out that Presidents wage wars and cause death (which he did in fact point out in his Prize acceptance speech), and in the end he would hav

The biggest danger to the human race right now is not terrorists or asteroids. It's Monsanto. These money hungry whores are destroying our food resources and replacing them with engineered replacements without realizing the full long-term impacts on both our health and the planet's.

Using roundup ready GMO means roundup is used on the plant, and you get roundup in you food. Using BT-producing GMO means there is botulism toxin on your food. Are you sure about the consequences?

Uhh... Bt-producing GMO plants have a gene from Bacillus thuringiensis in their DNA. Bt has been used for years as an alternative to more-harmful pesticides, and can even be used on certified organic crops. It has nothing whatever to do with botulism (from Clostridium botulinum).

You really should make sure you know what you're talking about before you make outrageous and trivially refutable statements. Just sayin'

They're just as "too big to fail" as the big investment companies except unlike last time, you can't eat money. That deserves a prize? They deserve to be split up, have all their lawyers disbarred forever, and all their ridiculous "patents" invalidated. THAT would be a benefit to global food.

Its like giving Obama the Peace-Prize. Oh wait... They did. Never mind. The also awarded the EU with that prize and as a citizen of the EU I am still waiting for my share of the prize money or the equivalent of two high quality jelly babies/gummy bears.

Romney would have done exactly the same. However, he would act faster, as he has less a conscience mocking him. So the difference is more in the time when you get there and not in where you go. I am looking forward to the EU-US trade union, so I can see how European food standards, established over decades, will be obliterated by that treaty in minutes.

BTW: That would not have happened with Romney, as he might not have found the EU on the map. (Just kidding of course).

The World Food Prize Foundation on Friday accepted a $5 million contribution from Monsanto Company to ensure the continuation of the annual World Food Prize International Symposium -- now known as the "Borlaug Dialogue." The funds support a renewed fundraising campaign to transform the historic Des Moines Public Library building into a public museum to honor Dr. Norman Borlaug and the work of the World Food Prize Laureates.

When you look up the WFP website [worldfoodprize.org] , you will find that "The World Food Prize is sponsored by businessman and philanthropist John Ruan and is located in Des Moines, Iowa."

The technology is great stuff. The real valid reason Europe and others complain goes back to the laws around these innovations - it really is innovation not round corners on a dumbed down interface.

Lets say the innovation results in a 20% increase in production. A farmer producing crops by traditional technology becomes a cash loss as prices decline. A farmer producing with the new technology does not own the seed and perhaps the product as they sign contracts to work for monsanto. The IP owner dictates what the cash crop worker does, how much they are paid and if they get to be viable next year.

That's markets, right? more efficient things come and less efficient things go. The measure of success of the market is the price we pay for food.

So we move to a contract mentality and family farms go away. You get short term goals with no concern about the productivity of the land from one generation to the next. Land does not work that way. You can do a decades worth of damage very quickly.

But what stake does Monsanto have in this game? So total productivity drops 30% due to short term corporate farming practices. It applies to farms moving back to traditional technology as well and Monsanto has a 20% advantage. Small farmers go away. Monsanto wins. We lose.

I have no fear of eating GMO agricultural products other than the damage it does to our future.

The award was given for devising a method to insert genes from another organism into plant sell, which could produce new genetic lines with highly favorable traits.

What's missing is the next bit, which should be something like this: "And then ream everyone in court who tries to keep some seed and use it to replant. Also, investigate, harass, litigate and otherwise bully Monsanto even suspects of using some of their "Genetic Property". Also, lobby for legislation which requires food aid from the US to be GMO crops and any seed giving to developing nations through US aid to be their property, so they can come knockin' later when that country's farmers prosper a bit and the native seed banks are all but extinct."

And then ream everyone in court who tries to keep some seed and use it to replant.

There's always the option of not buying them and going with open pollinated seed. If you get sued for violating a contract you signed, then that is on you. And before you bring up the inevitable claim of suing for cross pollination, wrong. [npr.org]

lobby for legislation which requires food aid from the US to be GMO crops

That's new on me. Point me to that specific legislation, because that sounds an awful lot like a load of made up bullshit that someone pulled out of the usual place. Yeah, for some crops like corn and soy, most of the aid is genetically engineered, because most of the crop is genetically engineered. This isn't a conspiracy; it's just how supply chains work.

Also, lobby for legislation which requires food aid from the US to be GMO crops and any seed giving to developing nations through US aid to be their property, so they can come knockin' later when that country's farmers prosper a bit and the native seed banks are all but extinct."

The lobbying isn't much of a problem. Kids ask their parents for ponies by the millions every Christmas. The real problem is that our corrupt legislators grant these wishes, mostly because it's not their own money that they are givi

Monsanto doesn't "sell" any more then Microsoft does. They lease out their "IP". They are working on "embracing and extending" the world food supply. Currently the natural plants and the bees feel a bit like Word Perfect. Farmers downwind are getting introduced to SCO like tactics, only the courts and congress are backing Monsanto.

Monsanto's products aren't copyrighted, they are patented. Those patents expire after 20 years. Roundup-Ready is becoming generic next year, at which point you can use it freely (since Roundup has also become generic). And Monsanto has to innovate in order to compete with its own generic product.

What has made Microsoft so dangerous and threatened to monopolize the industry was the unreasonably long duration of copyrights. And as you may notice, Microsoft Windows is fading from significance as well.

Linux I abandoned when I ran out of time to futz with settings about 10 years ago.

I set those settings 15 years ago and haven't looked back. Actually I wish I could say that were true, but along came KDE4 and Gnome3 and screwed everything all up. Keeping my fingers crossed that XFCE will leave the environment that is perfect for me alone.

No they don't. GM crops are nothing magical, they just have several extra genes inserted. They mutate with the same speed as "normal" crops (which quite often are already hideous mutants only alive because of human support).

Monsanto's litigation tactics remind me of the RIAA and its ilk. Both try desperately to stop easily duplication of their "IP", but in Monsanto's case they're fighting against the four and a half billion year old tactics of nature.

They can sue as many farmers as they like, their precious seeds will propagate out of their control eventually.

I think it would be more like giving a health prize to a pharmaceutical company for vaccine manufacturing. Sure, despite the public controversy concerning whether or not they cause autism, it would be true that the company has produced good things that have combated disease, although giving it to a corporate suit is still kind of bullshit. That's how I feel about it. Even if their seeds are helping people (for example, this [forbesindia.com] just popped up in the news), giving the prize to executives doesn't seem right. Perhaps individual scientists or teams, but corporate executives? I don't like it.

As a side not, the Frankenstein thing is pretty silly. No one calls it Frankenstein when someone picks out a somatic mutant of a fruit tree and grafts it to another tree, no one calls it Frankenstein when you chemically double the chromosomes of a plant either to cross it with a non-doubled one to get a triploid or to produce a plant with homozygous alleles from a pollen cell, no one calls it Frankenstein when you cross two plants that can't produce viable offspring and then remove the embryo before it dies to culture it into a hybrid that could never exist in nature, no one calls it Frankenstein when you blast a culture of cells with radiation or apply mutagenic chemicals to create all sorts of random mutations, and no one calls it Frankenstein when you select random mutation after random mutation in the form of artificial selection, a process that has caused such great genetic shifts as to create corn from teosinte [wikipedia.org] and broccoli, kale, kohlrabi, cabbage,and cauliflower (all the same species by the way) from wild mustard. Yet now this is Frankenstein? I mean, I suppose you could go the appeal to nature route and argue that everything else is just manipulating natural forces in a beneficial way, but of course, one could point to horizontal gene transfer and say the same of genetic engineering, not that the argument means much anyway.

There is no such thing as bacon corn but there is such a thing as a lard nut [wikipedia.org] that supposedly has a pork like taste. Maybe when human society finally gets its shit together with respect to agricultural biodiversity and starts developing and widely cultivating more of the usable species out there you might get a chance to try one.

And who could blame you, when they start the article with a sort-of lie and an outright lie

In the crop department, Monsanto is well on their way to dictating what consumers will eat, what farmers will grow, and how much Monsanto will get paid for seeds. In some cases those seeds are designed not to reproduce sowable offspring. In others, a flock of lawyers stand ready to swoop down on farmers who illegally, or even unknowingly, end up with Monsanto's private property growing in their fields.

No, Monsanto is not developing terminator genes, they bought a company that had developed it for its other IP, and no, the Schmeiser case was about as long as you can get from "a farmer unknowingly [ending] up" with anything.

Really, if there are that many other sources, than why link to the one that does maximal damage to your credibility?

Those "highly favorable traits" are resistance to the herbicides that Monsanto also sells. For every USA acre sown with their GMO corn they can be sure of selling an appropriate amount of Round Up to treat that acreage at least a couple of times.

The foreign markets will be more lucrative, though. Many countries in South America, Africa, and elsewhere do not have the regulatory mechanisms to assure that no more than a certain amount of Round Up is applied, and that it is only applied when the weather is good for keeping it on the cultivated fields. That means that Monsanto will be able to sell much more Round Up per acre to these foreign users, who can splash it around like holy water. If the morning's dose gets washed into the streams by the afternoon's rains, what the heck, it doesn't cost that much to just spray the fields again the next day.

Of course the ecosystem does not have the genes to protect itself from Round Up. But since the effects of poisoning it will not show up until after the fatter end of year bonuses to the Monsanto's executives, there is no reason for this company not to push their GMO products AND their wonderful herbicides.

There is a whiff of corruption about the USA State Department now. I am really surprised and disappointed that John Kerry is involved in this. I thought he had more sense.

Those "highly favorable traits" are resistance to the herbicides that Monsanto also sells. For every USA acre sown with their GMO corn they can be sure of selling an appropriate amount of Round Up to treat that acreage at least a couple of times.

Glyphosate (Roundup) has long become generic, and many companies sell it.

Of course the ecosystem does not have the genes to protect itself from Round Up.

Farmers have used herbicides since long before herbicide resistant crops. Roundup-Ready crops mean that farmers

Monsanto is developing drought resistant rice through selective breeding, which will compete with 4 or 5 other drought resistant strains of rice already developed in other countries. There are no stories about Monsanto doing any drought resistant GM rice. If it was happening, Monsanto would be blowing its horn about it. So parent post is factually wrong on this one.

Monsanto has gained approval to market a drought resistant GMO corn. The only thing is, it is not any better than strains of drought resistant corn already on the market, developed at agricultural colleges to meet the specific conditions of various areas. The Monsanto GMO corn is not as good a solution as the strains that have been bred for each region. Monsanto's long term goal is to probably combine "Round Up Ready" GMO corn with GMO drought resistant corn and drive all other strains out of the market. That will ensure an increase in the flow of Round Up, which is one of Monsanto's biggest revenue streams. (What Round Up can do to a trout streams is something else again.)

There has been a noticeable increase in Bt resistant pests in areas where Monsanto GM Bt crops have been grown. Perhaps it should not be a surprise that not much research on this "aberration" is being funded.

Aren't you the little Monsanto fanboi. But your post does provide a convenient place to air some of the other problems that are associated with Monsanto's exploitive business practices.

Monsanto has gained approval to market a drought resistant GMO corn. The only thing is, it is not any better than strains of drought resistant corn already on the market, developed at agricultural colleges to meet the specific conditions of various areas. The Monsanto GMO corn is not as good a solution as the strains that have been bred for each region.

So why would farmers buy it if it's not "as good a solution"? This isn't like the drug business where doctors are tricked into spending more of other people'

Yes, the principle ingredient in Roundup went off-patent more than 10 years ago. Monsanto holds patents on the mechanisms, processes, and specific formulations used to produce the various Roundup poisons. I understand that Monsanto says about half of its revenues come from Roundup and associated products (I think that includes the Roundup Ready seeds, too.)

The literature Monsanto provides on using Roundup on Roundup Ready fields is specific to Monsanto products. That is, you plant with Roundup Ready corn,

It's all about selling more Round Up. Since the GMO plants are resistant to it. That it involves plant sales is only a logistical device; the strategy is to get everyone everywhere to put Round Up on all their acreage.

Later on, Monsanto will buy the rights to the Miracle Grow trade name. And develop a line of chemicals that can be sprayed on all the ecosystems to help them recover from the mysterious global ecosystem diseases.